Around the Horn: Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays

Today, in honor of spring being just around the corner, I decided to catch some rays .... Tampa Bay Rays that is ... for this installment of "Around the Horn". This will also be short compared to the others as I don't have that many Rays cards to share.

The then Devil Rays first started play in 1998 as the first American League expansion team since 1977 when Seattle and Toronto were added to the league. The 1998 team wasn't anything to write home about, going 63-99 under manager Larry Rothschild. That first roster had a unique make-up of older veterans, like Fred McGriff, Jerome Walton, and Dave Martinez plus younger players like Miguel Cairo, Randy Winn, and Esteban Yan.

Perhaps one of the biggest coups that the Rays pulled off before their debut season was signing Wade Boggs as a free agent in December of 1997. Boggs would spend the final two years of his career with the Devil Rays primarily playing third base and doing DH duties. He also got his 3,000th career hit in a Devil Rays uniform. Most of these cards came from repacks and other miscellaneous stuff. Cards of Boggs as a Devil Ray never get old.

After the first two seasons being nothing to write home about, the Devil Rays went out and acquired some heavy sluggers like Jose Canseso in 1999 (where it was his last all-star season) and Greg Vaughn and Vinny Castilla in 2000 to compliment Fred McGriff, who was part of the original 1998 team.

By 2005, the Devil Rays went through three managers (Larry Rothschild, Hal McRae, and Lou Piniella) and never finished higher than 4th. In 2006, they took a gamble and hired Joe Maddon as the manager. In 2008, they rebranded themselves as just the Tampa Bay Rays and with a team that included Ben Zobrist, Evan Longoria, and Carl Crawford plus pitching from James Shields, Edwin Jackson, and Matt Garza, they Rays shocked everyone and made it to the World Series, losing to the Phillies in 5 games. 

Despite the Rays never existing in the 70s, you have to admit these are sweet throwback uniforms that they put together.

It's fascinating to look back and see just who passed through Tampa Bay. When digging out cards for this, I honestly forgot Johnny Damon donned a Tampa Bay uniform at one time.

To close things out, here's a few newer cards. The 1960 style cards from Archives a few years ago are just super cool. I really hope Archives has a good return to form this year, I thought it was a bust last year.

And that's all the Rays cards I wanted to feature. See, I said this would be short.

Only six teams left in the American League ... next up in the series is the Boston Red Sox.

A Blaster of Opening Day on Opening Day

I bought this when I picked up the two hanger boxes of Heritage a week or so back. I probably should've used better judgement and gotten a third box of Heritage for the same price but oh well. Since today is Opening Day, and the Reds Opening Day game got postponed until tomorrow for the first time since 1966 due to rain what better time that now to rip into this.

Keeping with my tradition this year, here's the first card from the first pack I opened. Not a bad start and I noticed the "future stars" heading is gone from the card.

Here's some cards of a few players I don't remember pulling cards for when I binged on Series 1. I really like the Alex Bregman card with the daylight and the orange uniform. It makes me long for nice spring and summer days where I can leave the snow and the cold behind.

A couple cool horizontal cards. Love the Green Monster in the background of the David Price card.

I got exactly one blue parallel, that being of Whit Merrifield. 

The Opening Day set is more based around inserts than anything else. Out of the eleven packs, four held these "Team Traditions and Celebrations" cards. I got the vaunted "The Freeze" card

I really like these team Opening Day inserts and the pictures are just amazing.

I guess these are supposed to be what players are up to in Spring Training? 

But here's my favorite thing of the Opening Day cards ... mascots!!! And I got three good ones, the Phillie Phanatic, the Rally Monkey, and our hometown mascot Mr. Redlegs.

As I mentioned though at the beginning, I think this ten dollar could've been better spent elsewhere, for example another hanger box of Heritage or a couple Gypsy Queen hanger packs. Oh well, lesson learned I suppose. Now, back to watching baseball that matters!

Retail Repack Adventures #15

So last Sunday morning I was minding my own business watching TV and then, out of nowhere, boom, the power goes out. Most times, when my power goes out, it's only out for a few minutes and then comes back. Not this time. I reported the outage and got a text update back saying the estimated time for restoration is two hours from when I reported it (so roughly noon). I figured what better way to keep myself occupied than by organizing some cards and tearing into a repack.

Since the power was out, I had to take pictures of everything using my phone. While I've never been all that great at taking pictures of cards, I think I found a good way to do it. I took pictures for some other posts coming up soon and they turned out well enough that I might have a new preferred way to show off cards as scanning can be rather tedious, especially when there's a lot to do, and it means I have to hole up in the bedroom away from everyone. Anyway, I digress. Here's the contents of the repack and it looks oddly familiar, packs and all, as if it was a clone from the previous repack. There's two packs of the TeenyMates, two of the Panini Draft Picks, a Babe Ruth pack, and 2016 Topps Heritage, plus a 50-card bonanza.

First up, the TeenyMates packs. I looked over the back of the packs before opening and it mentioned glow in the dark figures. So guess what came out of the very first pack? Yep, a glow in the dark figure which I'll admit is pretty cool. I kinda like these little dudes but let's see what else is contained within.

Now the highlights from the 50-card mini box. Much like the other box, it started off with a Toys R' Us purple parallel, this time of Aroldis Chapman. Also, bonus points for the throwback uniform. 

A few 2016 Topps Red Sox cards of David Ortiz and David Price from the team set. 

And a few randoms from the mass of 89 Topps that made up about a third of the box. I'll admit, it was kind of neat getting a card of Terry Francona when he was playing for the Indians, long before he was managing them. Also, check out Oddibe's custom warmup jacket.

The contents of the two packs of the Panini Draft Picks. I'll keep exactly two of these, Nick Howard and Justus Sheffield. The rest will find their way into either the trade box or Goodwill donation bag. I didn't bother with the Babe Ruth pack as it has been set aside, unopened, for a new home.

Finally, the 9-card Heritage pack. The best card here is the Rod Carew flashbacks insert but the most colorful is definitely the Erick Aybar card.

This repack definitely felt like a dud, the same exact packs as the last repack, only a handful of redeeming cards from the 50-card mini box, but the TeenyMates figures were pretty cool at least. As for the power outage, it turns out it was caused by a squirrel that somehow found it's way into a relay box.